Thursday, May 26, 2011

Countering moral liberalism

In a recent post I distinguished loosely between a political liberalism and a moral liberalism. I wrote of moral liberalism that it,

appeals to middle-class whites with only a passing interest in politics or intellectual matters. It has an emotional or even quasi-religious appeal for these people. Its strongest devotees seem to be middle-aged, middle-class white women.

The basic message of moral liberalism is that good liberal whites are bringing about justice and equality for oppressed groups by taking on and defeating the privilege and ignorance of bad, right-wing whites.

One commenter, Jesse, made what I thought was a good effort to develop further the idea of the "moral charge" that such middle-class whites get from this kind of liberalism. He began:

Moral liberalism works because people by nature are desperate for morality. When Christianity was delegitimised and utilitarian and scientific thinking began to dominate, the majority of people began to look desperately for a new form of morality, to escape from the idea of the world as a barren, cold and uncaring place, populated by people only motivated by their own self interest.

That seems plausible. An ideal of goodness that was once supplied by Christianity was no longer accepted by the philosophers. But the moral systems they erected in its place, such as utilitarianism, did not satisfy the moral idealism of many Westerners.

The essence of moral liberalism is white or pseudo white, middle class and above, people, acting in self-effacing, as well as morally superior ways. It's also associated with utopian aims and involves acting in manners that are obviously contrary to our instincts and natures. By being self effacing we recognise the existence of sin, the combating of which is the essence of morality, and we also dedicate ourselves to something better. By embracing utopianism we show ourselves worthy in striving for a better world. By acting in ways that are contrary to our instincts and natures we show that we're led by our ideas and reason rather than by passions. These ideas appeal to both our vanities and senses of superiority. It also appeals to our desire for moral urgency and submission to higher ideals.

Moral liberals believe they are rising above themselves to combat sin in the pursuit of high-minded moral ideals and personal distinction. This is the "moral charge" that appeals to a certain kind of middle-class white.

Moral liberalism as a manifestation of morality can be combated through morality. If you can demonstrate your moral value, or at least be confident with it, then you can go a long way towards fighting the left. These days I go to Church frequently and in doing so, by being constantly surrounded by the discussion and concern of moral issues and concerns, it allows me to deal better with the moral promotion of the left without submitting to anger or a subtle sense of guilt.

If we seriously discuss and feel comfortable with morality on the right side of politics then we can break the left's monopoly over it, and if we can engage with and discuss the moral underpinnings of conservatism and traditionalism, and not just criticise the left, then we will go a long way towards combating the left

If, on the other hand, we’re simply critical of all manifestations of morality, as many right liberals have done, and embrace the promotion of individual freedoms as the highest good, then we will lose the public.

Jesse has had a go here at answering the question of how we counter a liberalism which has a quasi-religious appeal for some white people. I think it's a good insight that right-liberals will never effectively challenge a left-wing moral liberalism if they only talk about the pursuit of individual freedom. Even though left-liberalism is also ultimately based on a concept of equal freedom, moral liberals need to feel as if something more than their own individual freedom is at stake - they need to feel as if there is a struggle between good and evil in which they are unselfishly subsuming themselves.

He's right too, I believe, that we need to give our own politics a moral charge, rather than just criticising the errors of left and right liberals. The question is how best to do this. Some possibilities are:

"recharging" the concept of the family man and the family woman.

reasserting/praising traditional ideals of moral virtue

linking personal distinction to character or real world achievements rather than to holding politically correct beliefs

reasserting the virtue of loyalty/fidelity

reasserting the virtue of prudence

discussing ideals of masculinity and femininity or praising these qualities in particular men and women

reasserting family and nation as worthy ends of our moral endeavours/duties

encouraging the sense that we owe a duty to past generations and the traditions they created - that we have an important duty to discharge in upholding a legacy left to us by our own forebears, one that gives a deeper meaning to our efforts to raise families, to protect and improve the environment, to defend or to raise the level of culture and so on.

Those are some hastily listed ideas. It's something I'd like to think through more and I'm certainly open to other suggestions.

20 comments:

I am still trying to understand your concept of Liberalism. According to you, there are Left Liberals and Right Liberals. (Right Liberals are, in the U.S., called Libertarians.) Correct?

So, Liberalism doesn't affect your economic beliefs. Correct?

Now, you have a new division, between moral liberals and political liberals. So, there are now 4 types of Liberals, left-moral, right-moral, left-political, and right-political? And holding autonomy as the highest good is the common thread?

Well, what about this left-right distinction you make? If this isn't the American Liberal/Conservative divide, then what name do you give to THAT?

I am still trying to understand your concept of Liberalism. According to you, there are Left Liberals and Right Liberals. (Right Liberals are, in the U.S., called Libertarians.) Correct?

So, Liberalism doesn't affect your economic beliefs. Correct?

That's not quite it. I would say that the underlying philosophy of liberalism is based on making individual autonomy (or self-sovereignty) the highest good.

But liberals then have to answer the question of how you regulate a soicety made up of millions of autonomous individuals.

This is where the basic division between left and right opens up. Right liberals descend from the classical liberal tradition in which emphasis is placed on the market. The idea was that individuals could act in a self-interested way for their own profit but that this would be regulated by the hidden hand of the market for the overall benefit of society and for human progress.

Left liberals (as we know them today) descend from the "new liberalism" of the late 1800s. This was a reaction against market based liberalism, with the emphasis being instead on a more deliberate regulation of society by a class of neutral experts via the liberal state.

So the further right on the liberal political spectrum you go, the more you have an emphasis on a small state and a free market as a means of regulating a liberal society and the further left you go, the more you get an anti-market politics based either on a state bureaucracy (the more mainstream left) or some sort of anti-state, anti-market politics (a more radical, anarchistic or Marxian approach).

Therefore American style libertarians would be on the "far right" of the liberal political spectrum, the Republicans would be centre-right, the Democrats centre-left, with the radical left being made up of more hard-core Marxists, feminists, anarchists and the like.

The new division I am making is more about political personality rather than political concepts. I'm trying to describe what the hold or appeal of liberal politics is to different people.

Why, for instance, would a respectable middle-aged, middle-class white Australian mother who attends Church regularly and who doesn't have much of an interest in politics, nonetheless with extreme and radical passion advocate the idea of whites being an oppressor group victimising American blacks. Why would she seek out every instance of whites being oppressors and blacks being victims and dedicate her teaching career to forcing this view of the world on her hapless students?

It's filling a need for her over and above an ordinary interest in politics (which she doesn't really have anyway).

I could accurately describe her politics as left-liberal and analyse her beliefs intellectually and criticise them in principle - but this wouldn't explain the hold that her extreme views have over her.

This is exactly right. Thank you Jesse for having written such a cogent introduction to the immorality of liberalism.

Hey, it just isn't enough for us to be factually right; we must be morally right as well. And it isn't enough to show that the Left is factually wrong; we must show it to be morally wrong as well.

Everyone knows that racially mixed children don't look like their parents, for example. And 5 seconds thought would show that although it was the parents who chose to mix, it's the children who must bear the physical consequences of that decision.

But how many leftist whites understand the pain those consequences cause the innocent children? How many realize how alienating, frustrating and embarrassing it is to a mixed child that he doesn't look like his own father, or a daughter who doesn't look like her own mother?

Parent-child alienation is not a good thing, and we should call the Left out on their support for it.

Or, everyone knows that women now compete with men for jobs.

But, how many realize how degrading it is to a man to have nothing to offer a woman? To be told that everything he can do, she can do better?

Jesse's right: Let's start calling the Left out on the immorality of their actions and point out the evil consequences to innocents.

Or, to connect back to the post on "Storm", instead of criticizing the Left for being "absurd" or "ridiculous", which just affirms their conviction that they possess some kind of higher, gnostic knowledge we don't, let's call this what it is: child abuse.

Let's remind the Left that they are lying to a defenseless child about the significance of his genitalia. Let's remind them that if he doesn't believe he is a man and if he doesn't desire a woman sexually, he won't be able to have children. Let's remind the Left that they are robbing him of one of the most meaningful and greatest duties in the life of a man: fatherhood, and that this is evil. And let's point out that it's the parents who are robbing him of his ability to have children, even though both of them obviously though that ability was worthwhile enough to exercise it themselves.

This is hypocrisy, and it's the innocents, the little children, who must pay the price.

Thank you for the response, Mark. All well and good so far. But when Americans such as Lawrence Auster are trying to define the central driving idea behind "Liberalism" (which is my interest, also), they mean "leftism" by in your terminology.

Have you thoughts about leftism? The book I recently recommended to you says there two motives for leftism (I use your term). Benign leftism is driven by compassion and radical leftism is driven by psychological forces created by inadequate care in childhood.

I have noticed a 3rd motive, which I'm just now thinking about, a certain "purtianism" inherent in some people that makes them want to take on a disinterested impartiality such as god might have.

Why, for instance, would a respectable middle-aged, middle-class white Australian mother who attends Church regularly and who doesn't have much of an interest in politics, nonetheless with extreme and radical passion advocate the idea of whites being an oppressor group victimising American blacks.

Because she's a contradictory mixture of political or moral liberalism with political or moral conservatism. Its political personality over political concepts as well you're right. Feelings or irrational 'rationality' over facts as well.

Perhaps on the other hand she's just one of the types that attends church regularly not as a way of seeking God and truth but of being with friends (not necessarily community bonds) and hasn't even read the entire Bible undiluted from liberal commentary (some Bibles are liberal monitored and 'gender, race neutral'... heck we even have atheist pastors!). Almost like a cafeteria Catholic.

But when Americans such as Lawrence Auster are trying to define the central driving idea behind "Liberalism" (which is my interest, also), they mean "leftism" by in your terminology.

I have read Lawrence Auster. He has talked about the reductionist, evolutionist white right, the neoconservatives and the libertarians. He talks more about right-liberals in the 'fake conservative' sense rather than the 'free-market sense' though sometimes they overlap.

Thanks for the write up Mark and Bartholomew for the comments. I would suggest that although I'm a chruch goer, the morality we employ need not be Christian morality. I was reading Aristotle the other day and his comments on virtue are an absolute mine of common sense.

Everyone knows that racially mixed children don't look like their parents, for example. And 5 seconds thought would show that although it was the parents who chose to mix, it's the children who must bear the physical consequences of that decision.

I'm a mixed (biracial) young woman and race will probably be as important as religion (Christianity) when I'm choosing my future husband (going to start searching this year for I will be 19 at the end of the year and I don't want to end up alone, childless or bitter when I'm old like some women have done these days... also I can't have way too much expectations or keep running after the 'perfect' ideal of what a husband should be and look like!)

Just read Kevin McDonald. Seriously he talks about all this stuff from an evolutionary perspective...nordic hunter gatherers etc etc.

www.theoccidentalobserver.net

Civil Rights in the US was agitated for because of the support of certain groups. Then those groups controlled Hollywood and every tv show and newscast became a put down of Whites.

Now combine this with Feminism where Women started getting the upper hand over men. Women are only concerned with Social Status (from roissy). Thus Hollywood determined social status and women fell in line. That is what you are seeing with your female teachers.

Whites moral liberalism really isn't suicidal until you add in another ethnic group.

Now the question I want to know is How did Christianity in America change or Differ so that Christians are so into this stuff?

Was Christianity in the states always a bit wonky and suicidal(shakers, quakers, puritans, mormons?)?

Or is it just like KevinMcD Says...In America there are tons of nordic/anglo saxon hunter gatherers with a habit towards extreme individualism?

I just totally thought of something!!! (i'm the anonymous from the previous Post)

We all agree that women seek higher status men.

I contend that the *cough* controlled Media in the United States determines the qualities that signal higher social status.

Thus women adopt those views...and men who need sex...acquisce.

Ok so the question I have is ...Why is the United States being hit so badly while say Nordic countries are forming pockets of resistance?

Is it Christianity? Is it English/Nordic individualism?

Maybe...in a country like the US which doesn't have a welfare system the women have to marry up. So in a non-welfare system the women have to choose the 'right' men.

But in say the Nordic Socialist country where women are running amok sleeping with men and having babies with multiple men. The idea of 'marrying the man with the right qualities' is lessening because women don't ever stay with the men!

Therefore, in the Nordic countries women don't use the media values as a 'signaling high value' for the men they sleep with...because they don't have to stay with said men after they have the babies. And then the men don't stay with the women so the men can get more conservative.

The social welfare state actually gets rid of the hold the media has on the values the people hold.

Women are only concerned with Social Status (from roissy). Thus Hollywood determined social status and women fell in line. That is what you are seeing with your female teachers.

Agreed that social status is highly important to women. But upper class Anglo women used to pursue social status by marrying a boy from an elite private school, living in a fashionable suburb, holidaying in a a fashionable resort, driving a luxury car and so on.

Moral liberals seem to be women who aren't as class conscious or materialistic. They have an element of moral idealism about them and they want to feel as if they are part of a cause in which the forces of good are battling against the forces of oppression.

They also seem to be women who need to expression pity and maternal care toward some helpless, struggling group.

Their moral liberalism is not driven solely by a need for social distinction. They are addicted to the moral charge that they derive from it.

It won't be easy to counteract. Perhaps we could present a more realistic view of black communities, one in which blacks are not portrayed as childlike victims of white oppression in need of mothering by our white moral liberals. Perhaps we could portray whites who are struggling in black dominated societies, such as the farmers in South Africa or the impoverished Afrikaner underclass. That might help to break up the narrative on which moral liberalism depends.

Now the question I want to know is How did Christianity in America change or Differ so that Christians are so into this stuff?

That's a really good question. I don't have a definite answer. But my suspicion is that the Christian churches have pushed a "social justice" line that is too close to liberal understandings of justice.

You have to remember, though, that Christianity is focused on men's souls, rather than on answers to political systems and structures. Therefore, a society has to get the secular things right itself and not rely on Christian theology to do the job for it.

If Christians are not getting the political side of things right then that's a reflection on what has gone wrong within the wider secular society.

I just totally thought of something!!! (i'm the anonymous from the previous Post)

We all agree that women seek higher status men.

I contend that the *cough* controlled Media in the United States determines the qualities that signal higher social status.

Thus women adopt those views...and men who need sex...acquisce.

Ok so the question I have is ...Why is the United States being hit so badly while say Nordic countries are forming pockets of resistance?

Is it Christianity? Is it English/Nordic individualism?

Maybe...in a country like the US which doesn't have a welfare system the women have to marry up. So in a non-welfare system the women have to choose the 'right' men.

But in say the Nordic Socialist country where women are running amok sleeping with men and having babies with multiple men. The idea of 'marrying the man with the right qualities' is lessening because women don't ever stay with the men!

Therefore, in the Nordic countries women don't use the media values as a 'signaling high value' for the men they sleep with...because they don't have to stay with said men after they have the babies. And then the men don't stay with the women so the men can get more conservative.

The social welfare state actually gets rid of the hold the media has on the values the people hold.

Do I make sense?

I've heard this all before. You seem to be displaying a form of anti-Americanism and combining it with the acceptance of promiscuity and family breakdown (that it's better in Nordic countries than in the USA when in reality all of the Western world is severely ill in various formats) as long as women are not going after the 'alphas'. Another reason why I'm not a MRA. Game is idiotic.

I understand your argument about the welfare state, but I don't think it's right.

If women no longer need to rely on men for support, because the welfare state will support them instead, then they will no longer seek out the loyal, provider type men but are free to go for the cruder player types.

That means that your quietly solid, slow developing Nordic man will be put at a disadvantage compared to your flashy, extroverted man from warmer climes.

If there are pockets of resistance in the Nordic countries it's more likely to be a result of the fact that multiculturalism has arrived there much later; that their national traditions go back further; that they don't belong to a major international language community but to smaller national ones; and that their electoral systems give smaller parties the chance to have influence within larger coalitions.

Yes I have been reading game (I'm a girl!) And it has NOT Been helping my outlook on life. In fact, I am becoming More Bitter/Angry after reading Roissy and Roosh...even though they make good points.

To Mark...

I've been talking to some people from Europe and they say the same thing..."it's because the US didn't have culture that went back so far"

Maybe it is my American ego, but I do get offended by that statement.

Whites have always had a form of moral liberalism---ending slavery...to even colonialism...Sometimes the moral liberalism has served the race well and now it is destroying us.

I think as long as the United States Media determines which Values are a sign of "High Social Status" our cause is lost.

How to reclaim the churches in the face of the controlled media....I just don't know...

I don't think women would ever go for alphas from warmer climates because White Women don't like Non-White Men. I know white men like to throw tizzy fits when a girl goes with a black guy...but I've never seen it (other than a red-haired girl or really large white women.) Every interracial marriage on my facebook page is between white men and non-white women. Women naturally prefer men of their own race at greater rates than men. Roosh went to Denmark and couldn't get laid cuz frankly he's dark and looked down upon:) Us white women are not that dumb!

"Moral liberals seem to be women who aren't as class conscious or materialistic. They have an element of moral idealism about them and they want to feel as if they are part of a cause in which the forces of good are battling against the forces of oppression."

Well...what else can you do when you know your poor? But I agree with you...Those type of women do put 'moral crusades' before material wealth if they had the choice between the two. In past times, it was probably a very good quality to have.

You either take back the media or take back the churches. The media is impossible...so the church is our last resort. And it can't be the Catholic Church cuz they make all their money on 3rd world countries now. So we must target Christian ministries.

I truly believe that the white nordic/anglo-saxon race is the only race that can stop a world ruled by a 'front elite' of disloyal, materialistic mud colored types being controlled by a 'super elite' *cough guess who* who then enslave the rest of the world's population. I truly believe that...and that is where my Christianity comes from and I feel that is where the Christian Ministry Churches need to go towards. That will redirect those women's views. (Cambria Will Not Yield stuff)

...so the church is our last resort. And it can't be the Catholic Church cuz they make all their money on 3rd world countries now. So we must target Christian ministries.

We need to help the Catholic Church besides other denominations and the Orthodox Church. Christian ministries is essential and that's a very good observation of yours Anonymous but theology is also very important and Catholics make up the bulk of Christian theology. Go to www.alittleleaven.com and prepare to see the 'Christian' heresies. It will boggle your mind.

I truly believe that the white nordic/anglo-saxon race is the only race that can stop a world ruled by a 'front elite' of disloyal, materialistic mud colored types being controlled by a 'super elite' *cough guess who* who then enslave the rest of the world's population.

The 'super elite' of SWPL or DWL as SBDPL (StuffBlackPeopleDontLike) would say.

"Moral liberalism works because people by nature are desperate for morality......to escape from the idea of the world as a barren, cold and uncaring place, populated by people only motivated by their own self interest."

Jesse's thoughts (or some very similar ones) have been on my mind for quite some time. However, I see people's personal moral failings as having relevance here.

What had occured to me is that so many people have such as sinful past (by traditional moral standards). For example, so much sexual sin of all types. Another example is that so many have killed their unborn children. And the culture itself is so ugly and base. It occured to me that people want to believe that they are moral people and they inhabit a moral world. So PC-liberalism serves as a substitue morality. It tells these people that they ARE moral people and they DO inhabit a moral world. And it demonstrates it to others, of course.

A world dominated by the devouring forces of greed, lust and vanity must be a scary one for its participants, no matter how its attempted to be justified, so they look for something to take the edge off it. What do we get? Nature worship environmentalism. Pacifism, at least extending to us. Deliberate blindness to all racial and sexual difference. The raising up of every poor or oppressed group and acceptance of every possible critique of ourselves whilst simultaneously generally ignoring everyone else's behavior.

Many of these ideas are drawn from Christianity, Christianity without a savior that is, unless the savior is them, and it would be a good discussion to see how the left draws from Christianity whilst at the same time being so officially hostile to it.